SpumCo Comic Book

Back when Ren & Stimpy was the toast of the animation world, John K. and his band of merry men at the cartoon studio SpumCo produced an oversized comic book at Marvel that was as beautifully drawn as it was deliberately revolting. This book collects all the gross-out humor, rage, and idiocy, with six stories of varying length, along with a few one- or two-page gag strips. John K.’s rogues gallery of Jimmy the Idiot Boy and George Liquor appear, as they go about their lives in a strange world operating on cartoon logic. Their adventures include Jimmy finding a remote control that effects any object he points it at, George visiting a butcher shop, Jimmy taking a job as a turtle food collector, and Jimmy forming a loving friendship with his own human waste. The characters’ exaggerated reactions to everything they encounter are well drawn, but the crude humor of frequent jokes about excrement and lingering stares at women’s rears doesn’t may not have wide appeal. Readers of Johnny Ryan and other gross-out cartoonists will find a home for this in their collections. (May)